


cerulean

by atlantisairlock



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/F, Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, POV First Person, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 14:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1902159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We met when I was six, that first summer when I learned how to swim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cerulean

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this post.](http://monstertag.tumblr.com/post/88172467749/i-dont-think-ive-posted-this-yet-my-piece-for)

_We met when I was six, that first summer when I learned how to swim._

It was the first time Father had ever brought us out to the beach in our tiny fishing village of Winterfell. Father fell asleep on the sand within minutes, Robb spent more time at the ice-cream stands than on the beach and Arya was more interested in building sandcastles than being Mother's little girl and snuggling by her side. 

I just wanted to swim.

I was six. I didn't  _know_ how to swim. But the ocean was deep blue, shimmering under the sun, lapping against the sand - I can still see it so clearly in my mind's eye. I can still see myself waiting until Mother turned her back and running down the slope to where the sea met the shore, taking two cautious steps into the water. I can still feel the water against my ankles and the sand between my toes.

I didn't know then that it was just one of the smaller pools, separated from the open sea by a dam of rocks and pebbles, meant for children like me. With every step I took I thought I was venturing deeper into the great unknown, so beautiful, so  _huge,_ spanning beyond anything I could ever imagine.

To a six-year-old me, you were just another girl my age. Another girl with eyes as blue as the water I was up to my knees in, skin paler than my own... a girl who could swim better than I could. For five minutes I watched you cut through the waves with barely any effort, mesmerized, before you finally saw me watching, before you finally swam over and said hello.

The first thing I ever blurted out to you was "could you teach me how to swim?"

And you said yes.

I remember the way you turned into a seal right before my eyes, gray-white with black spots dappled across your back, leading me, teaching me, using your fins to show me how to keep myself afloat, showing me how to tread water, nudging my chin above the water surface so I could breathe. 

I remember clambering out of the pool when I heard my parents' frantic calls, looking back to ask whether I would see you again, whether we could be proper friends, to ask what your name was in case I forgot.  _Margaery._

I remember throwing myself into Mother's embrace. I remember Father taking me back to our end of the beach and bringing me to the open sea. I remember his surprise when he didn't need to teach me how to keep myself above the water or how to move my legs so I could tread water.

I remember. I remember making Father take me to the beach every day after that for the rest of summer, begged him to let me swim at the pool where I'd met you. He always fell asleep, leaning against the rocks, leaving me to dive back into the water and play with you, my special seal-girl friend, learn how to swim alongside you. You taught me how to do the backstroke and how to identify the shells on the sand, told me stories about the paradise hidden in the tides, a paradise humanity would never know. 

I came back the next summer, told you about primary school and Miss Mordane, our form teacher and Father's terrible bagged lunches while we navigated a little ways out of the pool, and you listened. You always listened, and when I told you my stories, you told me your own.

The summers - and the months, the years - more or less slipped into each other, blurring somewhere down the line, and then the third summer after I'd met you, I swam too far out from the shore with you. The tides became less forgiving and despite you being next to me, trying to keep me afloat, I nearly drowned. Legs cramping, panicking too much to be able to breathe when the waves kept cresting over my head, when I kept submerging back into the water, everything a blur around me. Robb managed to paddle out in his canoe, dragged me out of the sea and got me back to safety, back to shore, but the damage was already done. 

I was fine, after they warmed me up and gave me a hot drink and bandaged my wounds. But Father didn't bring me back the next summer. 

However much I begged, I pleaded, showed off my swimming skills to him... he never brought me back to the beach again.

Never brought me back to  _you_ again.

 

 

_Seven years later I ran away from a beach party because Joffrey Baratheon had tried to kiss me._

As three summers passed, spent looking out of my bedroom window into the distance and wondering if you were still in the waters, waiting for me the same way I was waiting to go back to you, I grew up. Life got much, much busier and suddenly Father refusing to bring me back to the beach wasn't my biggest concern any more, especially as the months dragged on by and I grew a little older, a little more tired.

I hate knowing that, in so many senses, I forgot.

I was in three years into high school and lonely and failing every subject except History and Social Studies when Robb asked me to go with him to a beach party. I don't know why I let him bring me there, surrounded by strangers and drugs and alcohol, and apparently Joffrey Baratheon, the school's most notorious playboy, thought that any girl who stepped into his party consented to him trying to sleaze them. Robb wasn't around when he tried to kiss me against my will, probably getting drunk with some of his friends. It was the first moment in seven years when I felt the same terror I had felt back when I'd nearly drowned in the open sea. 

I was still terrified of water, but I was more terrified of - and disgusted by - Joff. So I ran. Ran to the shore of the beach, leaped into the water and struck out blindly, swimming in the direction of the moon's rippling reflection in the waves.

I don't know how you found me. I wonder if you heard me. But I'm glad you did.

Your eyes, those eyes that had captured me from the very beginning, were darker, sadder than I remembered, especially when you said "you don't come out here much anymore". 

"I got scared of the water," I told you, and I averted my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at you, so you wouldn't have to see that I was lying, that I had  _wanted_ to come back. "And I... I thought I made you up. A seal girl..."

"A seal girl who couldn't save you from nearly being drowned?"

"Margaery..."

You took my hands in yours, pulling me closer. "I'm sorry."

I think I said something along the lines of  _don't be,_ and the last thing I remember you saying was  _I missed you_ before you kissed me, a different kind of kiss. Not like Joff - so much better. So much warmer.

So much more real. 

 

 

_I hope you can forgive me for getting scared._

That night, for the second time in my life, I left the sea and didn't come back. Only this time, the fear was different. Only this time, I didn't go back not because Father forbid me to, but because I couldn't. Couldn't look at the water, the sky, without seeing the colour of your eyes. 

Back when I was little more than a child, Father made me put my swimsuit and goggles away because he was afraid for my life.

That night, I put them into a cupboard in the corner of my room, buried them under a pile of unworn clothing, and made myself go on with life as I knew it. I stayed out of the water after that.

But running away from what you want and who you love doesn't stop you from wanting it or loving them, and I spent my graduation wishing that it was being held on the shores instead of our hall so I could see you, started working at the pet store on the cliff so I could look at the breakers and swells so far down wondering if you were looking up at me without knowing it, moved out and bought a house near the docks so I could see the sun set behind the expanse of the sea when I looked out of the window just before dinner.

 

 

_I couldn't tell anyone about you._

Winterfell was a place where girls were supposed to grow up to marry a boy the village thought was compatible to them, a boy they'd grown up with together, so I married Tyrion just because everyone expected me to. He was our next-door neighbour and Robb was teasing me about him being my future husband from the time he could understand what my parents' plans for me entailed. 

Sometimes I feel guilty for lying to him for six years, for saying vows without an ounce of sincerity in my heart, for putting up a front and greeting him when he came home from work, keeping up the facade of loving, or being in love- but then I know he always knew; that there was someone else in my heart, that it was never him. 

I just think he never suspected it was you. He would never have. I don't think anyone in Winterfell would have understood - kissing another girl would have caused a bigger stir than you being a seal. 

I always thought I was lucky enough. Being supported and cared for and about, having something stable to hold on to, a peaceful life. And if I ever needed a rush of memory, my swimsuit and my goggles were in the bottom drawer, under a towel or two, objects holding pieces of my heart, the way you did. 

After I kissed you that night and then pulled away, rushed out of the water, I went to the library and read up about the mythical creatures called  _selkies._ The books all told stories about women and men who fell in love with selkies, who were left heartbroken and lost when their lovers returned to their home, returned to the sea, somewhere they, as humans, could never touch, and it made me a little more relieved... knowing that I wasn't alone.

It's been ten years since Tyrion died trying to save Dany Targaryen's little girl from the treacherous waters at high tide, twenty since I kissed you for the first time and the last time. Twenty years of pushing aside the chaos in my head, in my heart, and moving on. 

Those stories I read as a sixteen-year-old, in one corner of the library, never left me. I remember the heartbroken man who lost his selkie wife and child when they heeded the call of home and returned to where they belonged. I remember the woman who went to sleep with her selkie lover beside her and woke up to find him gone, never to return again. I remember the fisherman who was trapped in a storm, whose selkie wife came to save him at the expense of losing her happy life with her husband, unable to ever become a human ever again.

But I guess I'm luckier than most humans who have loved selkies, then, because this morning I got a second chance. 

You turned up at my door this morning. A little older, a little wearier, just like me, yet with the same striking eyes that I never forgot, that haunted me in my sleep for years. Still so much the same Margaery as I remembered, only you were in a wheelchair. 

I stood there just staring at you for what felt like eternity within a second, before you finally smiled at me and reached out to touch my hand.

"Hello, Sansa," you said to me, and your words reminded me of myself, thirty years ago, still six, still young, still carefree, loving before I realised I was in love with you. Margaery, my seal girl. 

I know you said it the way you did because you remembered. Just like I did - maybe this time, we will finally get to say the words I never allowed myself - or you - to say.

"Could you teach me how to walk?" 


End file.
